This is what happens when you get pressure to please shareholders instead of customers. Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time. But caught with their pants down during the AI hype, they fell into the trap so many other tech companies do. (Tesla is the undisputed heavyweight champ here)

Now that they’ve been burned by all this, here’s hoping they learn from it and return to form.

they should embrace it and be the anti AI tech giant

The whole industry is a shit show right now with the "AI race"

I don't want to be a software developer anymore because it's become a permanent deathmarch toward the next buzzword.

I don't fucking want AI in my phone, so take it out and be done with it.

Apple Intelligence hasn't been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.

For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually "Siri" rather than "Hey Siri"), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.

What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?

AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.

Marketing over promising and making it developments problem. A tale as old as time.

Siri is so useless. All these years and I use her to basically set timers and reminders.

This whole thing is a textbook example of how bad shady marketing today and can really cause you a lot of pain tomorrow. If Apple had not been so quick to let PR write checks their ass was not ready to cash the conversation around Siri would still just be the casual jokes about it sucking, and not more serious public blackeyes.

• Take screenshot of screen
• Send screenshot to Claude 3.7 or any other decent chatbot. Even GPT-3 is light years smarter than current Siri, but I don’t know it if can analyze images
• Run Claude’s response through a text-to-Siri-speech layer

There, now Siri can see your screen. Why can’t Apple accomplish this? Why are megacorps so inept?

How is this bad news? Dire situation?? They are not where they want to be with this “feature” so they delay it. Sounds like a smart move. Probably second best option to just dropping it

Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.

I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.

does anyone buy a product for AI or Assistant features?

A) No executives anywhere are taking personal accountability for anything

B) I upgraded from the 12 to the 16 for Apple Intelligence and I have yet to see it offer value. A substantial portion of hey Siri voice requests return with “I’m sorry I didn’t get that” even when using the voice transcription feature gets the words right

"Taking personal accountablility", but not a paycheck.

Terrible voice assistant. I preferred Google assistant, but even that is becoming slow.

Anyone who isn't completely high from huffing AI brainfarts saw this coming.

AI is overrated in almost every implementation that isn’t scientific research. The buzzword stock hype machine fake growth cycles are going to kill the tech industry.

these features to malfunction up to a third of the time

That's "ai" for you lol

I can careless for Ai Siri. There’s no real need. I barely use Siri anyways.

‘It’s still in development’ doesn’t strike me as “dire.”

Apple fucked up no doubt. Given how hard they pushed AI as a key feature of IPhone 16 I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a class action lawsuit for this.

But it’s also interesting to read a few things from the article that makes me hopeful for when Apple finally releases the features:

1. Let’s be honest, AI by Google, MS is shit right now. They are claiming the same promises which most of the time don’t work, but Apple chose to delay release until they could get better consistency.
2. The executives are taking personal responsibility? I hope that’s the case and no developers are thrown under the bus for this. I’ve rarely seen an article mention personal executive responsibility from a tech firm for delays and qa issues.
3. I hope marketing gets reigned in so they won’t push other unready features the next few years.
4. I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.